time

Are there certain tasks you have to do but doing them leaves you feeling stressed and depleted? I call those things energy drainers.

Click to play the audio version of How to Ditch Energy Drainers

Often we think that in order to get more done, we need to manage our time. That’s true to a point, but there is only so much you can do in 24 hours. We can’t create more time, but we can manage our energy.

Michael Hyatt said, “You will never be as productive as you need or want to be unless you have sufficient energy.”

As an example of what not to do, let me share how I spent my morning. I started out well by exercising and studying my Bible. But after breakfast, I scanned Instagram and Facebook, started responding to emails, got a call from my chiropractor and then had to look into my insurance benefits.

After wasting a couple of hours on all this, I noticed that I was feeling discouraged and depleted. That’s because I had spent the most energetic part of my day doing things that I find draining.

The best strategy for managing your energy is to identify your energy drainers, decide how to handle them, focus on your most important tasks first and add energy givers into your day.

Identify your energy drainers.

What are your energy drainers? Let me share a few examples that may help you identify the tasks that drain your energy most.

Responding to emails

Responding to texts

Making phone calls

Checking social media

Too much noise

Traffic

Clutter

Cleaning

People can be energy drainers too. These are people who suck the life out of you whenever you are around them for very long. You don’t have to ban these people from your life, but it is helpful to know who they are, so you can limit the amount of time you spend with them.

Manage your energy drainers.

Go through the list of activities you identified as energy drainers, and decide which can be eliminated, limited or postponed.

Eliminate. Some tasks like clutter or house cleaning may be eliminated by getting rid of them or outsourcing them to someone else.

Limit. Spend less time with people who are energy drainers. You can also spend less time on social media, or choose to drive at times when there is no rush-hour traffic.

Postpone. Let’s be real. There is no universe where I can stop responding to emails or making phone calls. But I can choose when to do these things. Some energy-draining activities can be postponed to a different time of day. It is best for me to respond to emails and texts, check social media and make phone calls in the afternoon when I feel less creative and energetic.

Tackle important things in your prime time.

Once you know what time of day you are at your best, do your most important tasks then. Keep the list small. I recommend only 3 per day, which I wrote about in this post titled Conquer Every Day Using This Trick.

The beauty of this technique is that if you have a busy day and you only get these 3 things accomplished, you have still done the most important things.

And sometimes, most important looks like playing a game with your child or making dinner. You get to define important.

Add energy givers to your day.

Part of managing your energy well is doing things that keep your energy level high.

So, now that you know your energy drainers, think of which tasks give you the opposite feelings. Which things give you energy, excite you, make you forget about time passing, put a spring in your step?

Add these things to your day when you are running low on energy.

On my list of energy givers? Working on this blog, exercising, being in nature, playing great music and listening to podcasts.

This blog is all about helping you save time so you can spend it on what matters most to you. (Let’s face it, most of us moms spend our time on urgent things like laundry instead of what we really want to be doing.) But before we can talk about ways you can save time, we need to know where your time is going. And that’s where time tracking comes in.

I know tracking your time doesn’t sound very fun, but it is so important in order to reclaim your time and get some of your life back.

The best way I can describe it is through an analogy. Let’s say you go to your kitchen one morning and see ants crawling all over your counter. (Ugh, the horror!) Now, would you just vacuum up the ants and go about your business? Of course not, because they would just come right back. You would find out where they were coming from and get rid of the source. (In my case, I found a hidden gummy vitamin that they were feasting on.) You know that unless you get to the source, you’ll never get rid of your ant problem. And unless you can find what is eating away all your time, you’ll never make significant, lasting progress at getting your time back.

You may think that you already know where your time goes. I certainly did until I decided to track my time for one week in December. And I was definitely surprised by what activities took most of my time. As it turns out, I spent way more time running errands than I thought, but I also had more free time than I thought, and I had been wasting it.

Hopefully, I’ve convinced you that it’s worth the effort to track your time. The goal is to make tracking as painless as possible. There are two ways to track your time and you should pick the one that will be easiest for you– paper or digital.

Track your time on paper

If you don’t have your phone on hand all the time or just like to do things old school, then a paper time tracker is the best choice for you.

This is how I tracked my time last December, and I used this time tracker created by Jessica Turner, author of The Fringe Hours and Stretched Too Thin. The time slots are broken into 30-minute intervals, but I tracked my time by 15-minute intervals so often I had two tasks written in each slot.

Then at the end of your time period, and I recommend one week, write down a few categories that represent where your time went like work, laundry, food prep/dishes, social media and errands. Total up the time you spent in each category and you’ll know where you are actually spending your time.

Track your time digitally

If you search for time tracking apps and websites, most are created for people whose work requires that they track time to bill clients. Those apps are overkill and overcomplicated for personal time tracking.

Instead, try using Google Calendar, or whatever calendar app you have, for time tracking. Choosing to take this route is going to be more of a hassle, but it will save you money.

How to use Google Calendar to track your time

Write out categories first so you can label time entries in detail, such as Food:Prep or Food:Dishes. A few to get you started would be food, cleaning, work, family time, errands and free time.

Leave Google Calendar open, so you can add entries as you go through day.

If you don’t have time to be very specific, you can go back at the end of the day and add the category name to the task.

At the end of the week, look back at your calendar and add up your totals.

This method will be very similar to paper logging, but it will be easier to log your time because your calendar is available on any device.

If that sounds like too much work, or you decide that tracking your time is so helpful that you want to do it on a regular basis, check out ATracker Time Tracker and aTimeLogger. Both are $4.99 but are less complicated and better suited for personal tracking.

If all of this sounds overwhelming, remember that we are going for progress, not perfection. Even making a list of your tasks on notebook paper and keeping a tally of marks beside each will give you some idea of where your time is going.

I’m excited to announce a new version of the blog– audio! We all have full lives and it isn’t always possible to make time to read. So click the mp3 below and you can listen to this post while you are in the car or doing chores.

Click play for the audio version of Where Did Your Time Go?: Time Tracking

How many times do you get to the end of the day and wonder where your day went? All you know is you were constantly in motion but don’t have much to show for it.

I hate that feeling.

I get frustrated when I make it to the end of the day and have only done laundry, made dinner and run a few errands. Those are things that I automatically get done because I have to, like brushing my teeth. But they don’t make me feel like I spent my day well.

That’s why I committed to using the top 3 method at the beginning of the year. This is the same technique that Day Designer uses in their planners.

Each Sunday, I choose what small tasks I will focus on that week. I may pick 3-6 things depending on how busy that week will be and how difficult the tasks are.

At the end of each day, I plan everything I need to do the following day. First, I write down any meetings or appointments, and then I write down the top 3 tasks I want to complete that day. (If you aren’t a planner gal like I am, you can always log your top 3 in a task app or Calendar.) I try to make sure at least one of those tasks is something from the list I made in step 2. Although I would like to devote my entire top 3 to goal-related tasks, that just isn’t realistic for me. Sometimes I have to include to-dos like meal prep or work projects in my daily top 3.

Tasks I Try Not to Include in My Top 3

Like I said, sometimes I can’t avoid it, but when life allows, I try not to include these types of to-dos in my top 3:

Chores like laundry, cleaning or cooking dinner

Making phone calls or responding to emails

Paying bills or doing regular errands like going to the grocery

Tasks not connected to a larger project or goal

Tips for Tackling Your Top 3

Try to tackle these first thing in the morning. That way you don’t get distracted by emails, social media or daily chores.

Start with the easiest task first to gain momentum and motivation.

Use time blocking to note on your calendar when you will work on your 3 tasks.

Reward yourself for completing your top 3 by doing something you love like reading for 15 minutes, having a cup of tea or coffee on the porch or taking a bath.

I would love to hear how the top 3 method works for you. Head over to the Defeating Busy Facebook page and let me know what your top 3 tasks are for the day.

Whether you are a working professional, wife, mom or all three, it always seems like there is way more to do than there are hours in the day.

“It’s not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is, what are we busy about?”Henry David Thoreau

And that’s before you add in the goals you want to work on and things you want to accomplish this year.

What none of us want is to feel so overloaded that don’t have time to breathe. I have been there and have almost come to tears, feeling like I’m drowning in busyness.

So here are 10 ways you can find more time to work on your goals without burning the midnight oil.

Reduce screen time.
The time we spend looking at our phones, on social media, watching TV and browsing the Internet adds up quickly. Keep screen time to a bare minimum for one week and see how much extra time you have.

Spend less time in the kitchen.
Stock your fridge with several crockpot, freezer and quick-fix meals so you can spend a minimum amount of time in the kitchen, while still keeping your family fed.

Declutter your house to spend less time cleaning.
I have been working on this the past couple of weeks and can see a huge difference in the amount of time it takes me to clean now that I only have absolutely necessary things on the counters and floors.

Delegate chores, errands and calls.
This is not easy for me, because I like things done a certain way. But there comes a point when getting help becomes more important than having the clothes or toys put away “perfectly.” Our husbands and kids can help more than we give them credit for.

Schedule your time.
Treat working on your goals like a meeting or appointment. When you put something on your calendar, you take it seriously and block out anything that conflicts with it.

Take advantage of weekends.
Carve out an hour or two first thing in the morning or at night on the weekends when your time is more flexible. Ask your husband to keep an eye on the kids, and go to a coffee shop or library if you need a quieter place to think.

Take a break from activities for a season.
Give yourself permission, without guilt, to take a break from things like volunteering, Bible studies and other groups for a short time. It doesn’t have to be forever, just until you make significant progress toward achieving your goals.

Dedicate your lunchtime, a few minutes after dinner or before bed to your goals.
Even as little as 30 minutes every weekday adds up quickly and will allow you to make huge strides toward your goal, especially if you have already broken your goal down into small, manageable tasks.

Maximize waiting time.
Think about all the time we spend waiting– holding on the phone, waiting in line, at appointments, picking up our kids, waiting for food to cook. Keep a list on your phone of quick, 5-10 minute tasks that you can tackle during your waiting time.

Batch your tasks.
I’ve also been working on this tip more this month. Grouping like to-dos together, like washing dishes, errands and meal prep, takes much less time than doing them several times throughout the day or week. Washing dishes is a great task to test batching on. Try washing them once each day instead of several times, and see how much time you save.

Pick one of these 10 that seems the most helpful and doable, and experiment with that one first. You may need to tweak it to work best for your family, but having extra time for the things you want to do will be worth it.

Don’t miss a single blog post by signing up for my weekly newsletter. I’ll only email you once each week, so you don’t have to worry about me filling up your inbox. After all, that would only take up more of your limited time. 😉

I talk a lot about how to save time, but it’s hard to break old habits or make significant changes in your routine if you don’t have a really compelling reason why. So here’s a Letterman-style list of 10 meaningful things we could all do with more time.

Get outside.
Have lunch outside or go for a walk. There’s nothing like getting away from the noise and into the sunshine to brighten your day. Pun intended.

Call or visit a family member.
How long has it been since you’ve had some quality downtime to spend with a grandparent, aunt or cousin? And if you don’t live close enough, a phone call is a close second.

Do something for yourself.
Paint your nails, watch a sweet movie or read a book or magazine. Taking time to refill your cup means you’ll have more to give to others.

Workout.
It’s good for your health and mind. You can’t beat those post-workout endorphins. Endorphins make you happy. And happy people just don’t kill their husbands. Thank you, Reese Witherspoon.

Have lunch with a friend.
If you are anything like me and my friends, we really want to get together but struggle with finding a time when we can all go. But we never regret it when we do; nothing beats spending quality time with good buds.

Play your child’s favorite game.
In my house, that game is currently Play-Doh. I’m really weird with Play-Doh. My brain isn’t great at figuring out what to do with it. But it’s all worth it to hear Francesca’s excited laughter when she sees me getting it out. I bet the same is true with your kids.

Do a random act of kindness.
When your to-do list isn’t as long, you have more time to think about others. We recently moved to a new neighborhood, and one neighbor brought us a loaf of pumpkin bread. How sweet was that? She used her spare time to do something nice for us, and we will always remember her for it.

Reflect.
When is the last time you were able to just lay back and think– about life, about God, about your parenting or your marriage? If you’re always on the go, it’s nearly impossible to have much time for reflection at all.

Go on a date.
Next to our relationship with God, our relationship with our spouses is most important. It takes time and intention to develop and maintain a good marriage. Our spouses need to know how important they are to us, and our kids need to see that too. So, get a babysitter, and hit the town. (I need to take this advice myself.)

Time with Jesus.
I definitely find that Jesus often gets jipped when I am pressed for time. My Bible reading is shorter and my prayer time is only a minute or two.

Everything on this list is important but less urgent than running errands or checking email. But sometimes, we have to put aside good things for better things. And focusing more on God, our relationships and our health are definitely better things, right? We know this, but do we believe it enough to make changes to our daily lives? I do. What about you?

I am the first to tell you that I don’t have all the answers. And that’s one reason God created us to be in community. To learn from each other, to support each other, to love each other during this everyday thing called life.

And whether you’re a man or a woman, one of the hardest things to figure out as we get married and have one child, then two, then a million activities is how to make time for the important things we say are our top priorities instead of only the urgent things that scream for our attention. It is a good question and an important one in living life for God. So I reached out to these blogger ladies whom I respect most to get their opinion.

Michelle Myers, Cross Training Couture and She Works His Way
“Instead of trying to prioritize every area of my life and strike the “balance” that women like to find, I’ve found it’s much easier to only worry about one thing: putting God first. Matthew 6:33 reminds us that when we seek God first, everything else gets added. So rather than trying to order everything, the way I feel the most secure in how I spend my time is simply surrendering fully to God. When He is first, everything else falls into place. If He’s not first, everything is chaos. So simplify your life by making sure you get that first priority spot right, and allow Him to order everything else.”

Mary Hyatt, MaryHyatt.com
“For me, I truly believe that it is my responsibility to create the life that I want. I know that is my job. So for me, I have made the time to slow down to figure out what I value most and what quality of life I actually want to have. And from there I make sure that I have great boundaries. I don’t start working and taking clients until 10am. That gives me time to create a beautiful morning routine. I can go on a walk, read, shower, meditate or whatever I am feeling that would be nourishing to my soul. Honoring those time boundaries are vital for me to live a life that feels full of passion and one that inspires me.”

Kalyn Brooke, Creative Savings
“Even though it’s so easy to say we “don’t have time” for this or that, I prefer to switch that phrase around and say, “I choose not to make time for X”. I firmly believe that we have time for what we make a priority, and when you start thinking this way, it replaces an otherwise limiting belief with a more empowering one. We can’t always do ALL the things, but we can choose to do the best things.”

Katie Drane, Fun Home Things
“It was the middle of the night when my daughter was 2. I was awake and worried about how I was going to manage everything–a house, a job, a shoestring budget, and be the kind of mom I wanted to be. The future seemed so scary and nothing gave me any comfort in that moment. Out of nowhere came the phrase “Don’t miss the point”. That’s it.

Looking back, I have no doubt it was a God thing! Those words completely eased my worry and instantly shifted my focus to the things that mattered most. Life looks so different now but when I find myself feeling overextended, unable to juggle everything, feeling like I’m letting everyone down, and not sure which fire to put out first, I tell myself “Don’t miss the point.” There are just things that matter, and things that don’t.”

Lisa-Jo Baker, LisaJoBaker.com
My answer would be that I get really good at saying “no” to things 🙂 If it’s not a priority for my family or my calling, I just say no. Guilt free 🙂

For example, I don’t volunteer in my kids’ school, do a ton of crafts, or participate in all the school activities I could. But I’ve learned to say yes to the things that bring our family life and my calling joy.

Allie Casazza, The Purposeful Housewife
“I wake up early and get the most pressing tasks done before I have breakfast with my kids at 8:00. It has helped me and freed me up so much! It makes for a great day when you know the biggest task is done.”

Annie Edwards, The Fullness of Empty
“I have found this activity to be helpful in determining how to spend my time. Take a piece of paper and fold it in half, long ways. On one side of the paper write your priorities. A priority is what is important to you. What makes you happy? What do you want to accomplish? How do you want to be remembered at the end of your life? My priorities are my faith, family, and fitness. Then on the other side write your daily activities. Cross out anything that does not help or support those priorities. How can you invest in these priorities? How will you use your time? Resources? Energy? Ask God to give you wisdom on how to better live out your priorities. Is there something you could do more often? Is there something you could limit to help serve your priorities?”

Rachel Meyer, Rachel Meyer Fitness
“As a stay-at-home-mom of two toddlers who also runs a Fitness and Holistic Health Coaching business, there are many tasks I have do each day without question. But for the other tasks that I don’t necessarily have to do but are the most important things in my life, I do a few things to make sure they are prioritized. First, I schedule the majority of those important things in my google calendar. My workouts, meal planning + prep, hiking trips with my family or friends, coffee dates with friends or husband, and more, are tasks that I don’t have to do but are a huge priority. Secondly, I make a prep list so ensure I can do those things with more ease. For example, the night before a morning workout, I lay out my entire outfit and know exactly what my workout will entail. I often invite a friend to join me for extra accountability. Another example would be meal prep. If I plan to meal prep for the week on Sunday, I make sure I schedule in a grocery shopping tips on Saturday sometime. Or if I’m going on a date with my hubby, I make sure clients know I’m not available during that time. You get the idea. Lastly, I make sure I consistently do the important things so they become habits and not just important things that I WISH could get done.”

Primary Sidebar

Get Connected

About Me

My name is Ashley. I’m the wife of the best guy on the planet, the mom of two crazy girls and a lover of all things country music, reading and group fitness. And I’m super passionate about helping you simplify your life so you can spend more time doing the things you love.